


Weathered Souls

by NeoVenus22



Series: Powergate Chronicles [2]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Mystic Force, Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Power Rangers Wild Force, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Powergate Chronicles: interlude.  Taylor, Eric, Cam, and Xander are the latest SG team. But on their first trip through the Stargate, they are soon forced to make an unexpected sacrifice in order to save one of their own.  'Weathered Souls': The team has to go see the base psychiatrist following the events on P3R-342, and come to some conclusions about their team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weathered Souls

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Only for previous stories in this series. AU for PR, takes place during mid-season 4 for Stargate.

Dr. MacKenzie had a habit of bracing his elbows on the table, clasping his hands, then resting his chin on this tower of flesh. It served to make his watchful gaze perfectly level as he fixed it on the Stargate Command personnel he was grilling.

No, not grilling, Xander reminded himself. Questioning. Interviewing. He's not judging what we did on P3R-342, he's just checking to make sure we're still...

Still what? Still themselves? Still normal? Still sane?

"Mr. Bly?" MacKenzie said, and Xander bit back the odd urge to remind him it was _Doctor_ Bly. He didn't think Cameron or the major would be so restrained. "Your mind is wandering."

"I'm sorry," said Xander hastily. The more he wandered, the more MacKenzie would insist on further sessions to make up for lost time. Not to mention, the more he'd want to know _why_ he was wandering. "Doctor Jackson has been delegating some pages of this Goa'uld text he found recently, and I don't think they were written by native speakers. It's keeping me up at night. It's like if someone translated something from French into English, then tried to translate the English version back into French. I'm getting a little lost in the translation."

"I see," said MacKenzie, doing the steeple thing with his fingers. "Mr. Bly..."

"Doctor," he blurted, then regretted it. MacKenzie was supposed to be helping, after all, and how much could he help if Xander insisted on the distance? "I mean, Xander."

"Yes. Xander." Although he said it like he didn't think it was much of a name. He probably didn't even realize it. "You've been avoiding the subject. Don't think I don't see this."

Xander sighed without being able to stop himself. "No," he said finally. "I didn't approve of Major Earhardt blowing up the al'kesh."

"Yet you said nothing?" Xander could no longer remember if MacKenzie was working from the reports, or if he was recalling something Xander had admitted in a previous session.

"No. I trusted the major's judgment in the matter. It was, tactically, the best decision." MacKenzie stared, obviously guessing that there was more Xander wasn't saying. Unfortunately, there was. Xander had no choice but to force himself through the rest. "It just seemed a little cruel."

"Even though it was a Goa'uld."

"It was Lieutenant Myers with a snake in his head, as Colonel O'Neill is so fond of putting it," said Xander. "It's not the same. Most Goa'uld have been inside their hosts for hundreds, thousands of years. Not ten minutes. It just felt like..."

"Like Lieutenant Myers could have been saved," MacKenzie said gently.

Xander couldn't bring himself to look at the man. These were the things he couldn't say. Shouldn't say. "Yes."

"Do you think Major Earhardt is still capable of leading?" probed MacKenzie.

A burst of derisive laughter rose like lava in Xander's throat, and he only barely managed to keep it down. It was exactly what the major had ranted about: "_They're going to find a way to say that I'm not fit to be on a team anymore._"

"Yes," he said. "Undoubtedly. She has a brilliant tactical mind, and even though our first mission didn't exactly go as planned, I don't think she's any worse off for it. It was bad luck. And she's too smart to let a run of bad luck get to her."

"I see. And do you think you're still capable of following her?"

Xander stared. Taylor had been completely right about the purpose of this little exchange. Maybe she was a little paranoid, a little defensive, but she was intelligent and had good instincts. And for some reason, that fortified him. "Yes. Absolutely."

* * *

"It's funny, isn't it?" said Cam. "We think we know so much about the world, about science, about the very nature of humanity. And then one day a giant stone ring falls in our laps and we realize we don't know jack. And that we're on the brink of destruction because the little we know is suddenly the too much they know."

"Would you say you're afraid?" said Dr. MacKenzie.

"Afraid of what? Afraid that a megalomaniacal overlord knows I was hospitalized with appendicitis when I was thirteen?" The psychiatrist stared at him blankly. "Lt. Myers and I discussed it once," Cam explained. It had been after a training session, learning how to heft a P-90, and somehow the subject had switched to childhood maladies. It was nice, sharing the experience with someone whom he'd felt he had nothing in common. Myers had grinned with pleased embarrassment about the cute girl who'd brought him flowers after his surgery; Cam had admitted how much he loved the way his younger cousins had fussed. After that conversation, Cam had begun seeing Eric less as the sullen soldier he'd been introduced to and more as an actual person.

A person who was currently going through his own living hell, the sort Cam couldn't even begin to imagine.

"I am a little afraid, yeah," Cam said. "I don't think you'll find a person in this compound who isn't. It's smart to be afraid."

"Major Earhardt is very angry," MacKenzie said.

"At anyone in particular?" Cam joked. In his experience, the major was just a generally angry person.

Dr. MacKenzie didn't get the joke, or if he did, he ignored it outright. "Is there anyone in particular she should be angry at, Mr. Watanabe?"

"Doctor, thank you." Cam couldn't bite back the impulse to throw his title around; he was no less worthy of respect than the man in front of him. And say what you will of the major, she always got his title right. Maybe she didn't mean it with any particular respect, but she always got it right.

"My apologies." Although MacKenzie didn't look particularly apologetic, more like he was cataloging Cam's quick response and marking it in his file: _Considerably inflated ego, demands respect in all situations_. Or something like that. "Do you think Major Earhardt is right to be angry?"

Cam didn't think the major was not wrong in her anger; he just wasn't sure at whom she should be angry. "Maybe."

"Do you believe she's angry with you?"

"If she was, I'd know about it," Cam said. "Besides, why would she be angry at me? I was following her orders."

"Orders you didn't agree with."

"And what does that have to do with her anger? It's not really the point, whether I agree with them or not, is it?" said Cam offhandedly. That was the military, after all. Chain of command, blind obedience. And for what it was worth, he respected the major's judgement. "I didn't disagree. It was... necessary. And at that point, we'd already assumed that Lieutenant Myers was dead." The knowledge hadn't made pushing the button any easier, but it had helped. No point in risking your life to save something that was well beyond saving. He had to believe that.

"Was it a decision you would've made?"

"It wasn't my decision to make."

"That's not the question."

"No," said Cam, "it's not a decision I would've made. But that's the point. It was a hard decision, and one that I wouldn't have made, and Xander wouldn't have made, but someone needed to make that call. Someone needed to lay down the line, and given her history with Lieutenant Myers, I think it's unbelievably courageous of Major Earhardt to have made that call. I could follow the order, yes, but I wouldn't have been able to make that call myself. And given the circumstances, my indecision probably would've gotten us all killed."

"So would you do it again?"

"I would do what Major Earhardt asked of me, yes."

"Why?"

The fact that MacKenzie was asking meant he thought it went beyond simple chain of command. And it did. Cam could easily apply for a transfer, ask to join a different team, even go work at Area 51 if he really wanted. Except he couldn't do that. The pain in the major's face when they'd had their first moment alone, this moment of weakness she'd had that they weren't supposed to witness. That alone said more than her simply being team leader.

Cam shrugged. "Because I trust her."

* * *

"Major."

Taylor put as much venom into her glare as she could. She didn't care that MacKenzie was Stargate personnel, that his evaluation of her would determine if she stayed with the program or got reassigned. At the moment, she couldn't have hated anyone more if she tried. MacKenzie sat there, judging, someone who had never been off-world but thought he knew exactly what was supposed to transpire. They were all like that around here, thinking they knew exactly what to do all the time.

"What," she said flatly.

"Major, I have all afternoon, if we must."

"We've been through it. Lieutenant Myers gave me his GDO. We were operating under the assumption that he wouldn't be returning with us. Dr. Watanabe set the C-4 on his own. But I gave the order to blow the ship."

"And Lieutenant Myers made it out."

Taylor wanted to scream; she felt the pressure building in her lungs and throat and aching to burst from her body cacophonously. She didn't want to have to keep reliving this over and over again, revisiting the last moments of Eric's life. "Yes, he made it out. It wasn't like we had a moment to talk over the plan or anything, you know. I assumed he was just going to attempt to detain Shu long enough for the rest of the team to make our escape."

"What makes you think that's what he was going to do?"

Taylor stared him down. "Because that's what I would have done."

"What exactly is your relationship with Lieutenant Myers, Major?"

"My _relationship_?" she said. She'd figured it would come to this eventually, still, she didn't think it would be this soon. She wondered what Bly and Watanabe had said in their sessions that made MacKenzie jump to any unfavorable conclusions about Taylor's relationship with Eric. She wondered if maybe all of her efforts to keep him at a distance when they were on the base together had been futile, after all. Maybe people were talking.

"We grew up together," she said abruptly. "He's a friend."

"I see."

"Is that a problem?"

"My only concern is that your... shall we say, _closeness_ in the matter isn't somehow obscuring your judgment."

Taylor barked out laughter. "Are you kidding me? If we were so damn _close_, do you think I would've blown up the al'kesh? It was the job. It needed to be done."

"It backfired," MacKenzie reminded her, unnecessarily.

"That had everything to do with Shu, and nothing to do with my friendship with Eric."

"Do you think that this will affect you in the future?"

More like come back to haunt her. "Yes, I think the whole Shu thing is a big ass problem," she said. "But if you're asking if the fact that a Goa'uld is in the body of a friend is really going to affect my job, you're barking up the wrong damn tree."

Taylor felt anger running through her, pounding harder and louder than her own pulsing blood. She braced her hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward slightly. "Can I ask you a question, _Doctor_?" Somehow, the tone that she so loved to use on Bly and Watanabe had take on a different, darker turn. They, at least, were people. MacKenzie was an opponent, an enemy, playing as her friend but wanting to tear her apart. Trust the doctor? She didn't think so.

"You may."

"What did they tell his mother?"

MacKenzie frowned at her. "Lieutenant Myers's mother?"

She couldn't imagine who else they'd be talking about that clarification was really required. "Yeah."

"I don't know."

"They're neighbors, you know, his parents and mine. Gotta put a bit of a strain on the relationship, though, when only one kid comes home, don't you think? And it doesn't even matter what Mrs. Myers knows, because _I_ know. I know the whole grisly truth. I'm going to be the one that's going to have to look at her and try to live with the fact that I was the last person to see her son alive. That I could have saved him and I didn't. That I gave the order to have him killed. And that's not even the worst of it. That's not even the _worst_ of it. I can't even _explain_ the worst of it, even if she had the clearance, because even on paper it sounds bizarre and unreal, and then you actually get there... You think maybe you know, you adjust your perceptions of the world to try and understand, but you don't know, you don't _know_ until you're there. Until you see someone you love and realize there's nothing in there. That they're just a shell, a vessel, for some crap-ass parasite. They're just a joke now, a twisted joke. The Goa'uld take everything you know and throw it back in your damn face."

Taylor stood up quickly, her chair screeching across the floor. "It's not going to affect my damn job. If nothing else, it's going to make me better, so I can see to it that this doesn't happen again. And it won't. You can tell whatever authority you report to." Taylor glared, pure, unfailing conviction in her eyes. "It _will not_ happen again."


End file.
